As autumn well and truly covers London in a cool, golden-brown blanket, it is a perfect time for me to reflect on a couple of things that made summer 2016 such an entertaining, challenging and rewarding time. The summer sun brought with it some exciting projects and events that I was thrilled to be involved with. I had the opportunity to explore some new realms and also revisit some familiar surroundings. I'll cover these over the course of my next few posts, but for now I wanted to talk about 2 great music to picture projects I had the chance to work on during the tail end of summer.
In August I was finally given the chance to take my first step into an area I have wanted to explore for a long time. Advertising has always been of interest to me since my academic days at City University, where I learnt the important lesson that writing ad music is a very difficult thing. When writing for an advert, you usually have a tiny amount of time to introduce, develop and conclude a musical idea, whilst also representing the aesthetic of the brand in question.
With this in mind, this summer I jumped head first into my first advertising project. The advert was for "The Lumiere Collection", a range of bespoke diamond jewellery made by London-based luxury retailer William & Son. The ad itself was produced and directed by Leon Chew at Modern Parallax and my frequent collaborator Rick Blything was on sound design and mixing duties. You can check out the finished product below.
Once we had finished our work with Modern Parallax, myself and Rick jumped straight into working on our 3rd collaboration of the year so far. This project is called "Sand Men" and is a short documentary film written and directed by award-winning London-based filmmaker Tal Amiran. Sand Men gives us an insight into the incredibly tough experiences faced by migrant workers coming to the UK. Leaving behind their homes and families, many find that the UK isn't the land of opportunity they had hoped it would be for them.
The film is slated for a 2017 festival run and, based on Tal's track record, should be one to watch for you film festival fans. That about wraps it up for this post but I'll be back later this month with more news and some brand new music.